RUSSELL HIVELY: Trivia thoughts

Because I attended Laymen’s League early each morning last week, I did most of my walking in the afternoon.

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Neosho Daily News - Neosho, MO

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Posted Dec. 27, 2012 at 10:14 PM
Updated Dec 27, 2012 at 10:37 PM

Posted Dec. 27, 2012 at 10:14 PM
Updated Dec 27, 2012 at 10:37 PM

Because I attended Laymen’s League early each morning last week, I did most of my walking in the afternoon. Things are much different that time of day. There is much more traffic and I don’t walk some places because there are operating businesses with customers coming and going. They don’t need me walking in their parking lots. Wildlife observation is less in daylight, also.

For some reason, I have been thinking about bits of trivia I have read or seen on the computer the last couple of weeks. One was the video of “cotton bale flipping.”

After harvest, round bales of cotton are wrapped in plastic and set in rows until they are hauled to the gin. The truckers do not want the bales in their trucks rolling around, so they “flip” them unto their ends. An interesting video.

Recently I read an article about “Eisvein,” ice wine. Some German grape growers leave a portion of their late maturing grapes in the fields until it becomes cold enough to freeze.

Then the frosted grapes are harvested and made into a special ice wine. It has a special sweetness and taste unobtainable in other wines.

Conservationists and outdoorsmen have a fear that the younger generation will lose interest in the outdoors, and there will be fewer and fewer hunters and fishermen. I recently read that 2011 was the first year in a long time where more hunting licenses were purchased in the United States than the year before. So maybe there’s hope.

Many gardeners are careful to grow only one zucchini plant in their garden each year. Zucchini’s biggest problem is that it can produce so much fruit that it overwhelms the gardener who goes to extremes to share his crop.

Zucchini is celebrated in Richardton, N.D. They hold a biggest zucchini contest at their Little Opryland Days each August. Fourteen entrants were in the contest in 2012.

Did you realize that ice on lakes and ponds needs to be four inches thick to be safe for walking? At least 18 inches of ice is needed to support a pickup truck.

How to escape a motor vehicle which has fallen through the ice is taught in driver’s education classes in northern states. Rolling down the window to allow the vehicle to fill with water is one of the first procedures. Looking up through the water for a hole in the ice to pop up through is second most important.

Most northern states require that any vehicle that falls through the ice must be removed. Removing a vehicle which has sunk beneath the water’s surface is costly.

Take a walk, overuse those signal lights, enjoy trivial matters, keep off thin ice, and see what you notice while passing along Wildcat Boulevard.